"I think you're right, Zombie," Ringer says. "It doesn't have meaning. It's just luck."

"Right. Luck. His bad. My good. Like stumbling onto Constance hiding in that pit and then you stumbling into both of us."

"Yes. Like that." Blank-faced.

"Talk about beating the odds. You know what it's like, Ringer?"

"What is it like, Zombie?" Her voice, too-blank, without inflection, without emotion.

"One of those no way moments in movies. You know what I'm talking about. The thing that makes you shake your head and go no way. The good guys showing up in the nick of time. The bad guys suddenly getting a case of the stupids. Ruins it for you. Wrecks it all to shit. The real world doesn't work that way."

"It's the movies, Zombie," Ringer says. Holding herself very still. She knows where this is going. She knows. I've never met anyone smarter. Or scarier. Something about this girl scares the living crap out of me. Always has, from the first day I saw her in camp, watching me do knuckle push-ups in the yard until the blood pooled beneath my hands. The way she looks at you, flaying you open like a fish on the cutting block. And cold. Not the cold of a walk-in freezer or the cold of this never-ending fucking winter. The cold of dry ice. The cold that burns.

"Oh, the movies!" Constance cries softly. "How I miss the movies!"

I've had enough. I am done. I level my sidearm at Constance's head.

"Touch that rifle and I will kill you. Move one inch and you will die."

36.

THE WOMAN'S MOUTH drops open. Her hands fly to her chest. She starts to say something and I hold up my free hand.

"And no talking. Talking will also get you killed." To Ringer, but keeping my eye on Constance: "You can come clean now. Who is this person?"

"I told you, Zombie-"

"You're good at a lot of things, Ringer, but you suck at lying. Something's seriously twisted here. Tell me what it is and I won't waste her."

"I'm being honest. You can trust her."

"The last person I trusted threw cat stew in my face."

"Then don't trust her. Trust me."

I look at her. Blank face, dead eyes, and the coldness that burns.

"Zombie, I would never lie to you," Ringer says. "Without Constance, I wouldn't have made it through the winter."

"Yeah, tell me how you did that. Tell me how you survived an entire winter in the most obvious hiding place inside a Silencer's territory without freezing to death, starving to death, or getting knifed to death. Tell me."

"Because I know what needs to be done."

"Huh? What the hell does that even mean?"

"I swear to you, Zombie, she's okay. She's one of us."

The gun is shaking. That's because my hand is. I bring up the other to support my wrist.

Constance is giving Ringer a look. "Marika."

"Okay, now that's another thing!" I shout. "You would never tell her your name, not in a million years. Shit, you wouldn't even tell me."

Ringer slides into the space between me and Constance. Her eyes are not so dead now, her face not so masklike. I've seen the look once before, in Dayton, when she whispered, Ben, we're the 5th Wave, determined to convince me, desperate for me to believe.

"How do you know she's one of us, Ringer?" I ask. Well, more like beg. "How can you know?"

"Because I'm alive," she answers. She holds out her hand.

The safest thing-for me, for her, for the people I left behind in the safe house-is to ignore Ringer and kill the stranger. I have no choice. Which means I have no responsibility. I can't be blamed for following the rules that the enemy set down.

"Step aside, Ringer."

She shakes her head. Her dark bangs slide back and forth. "Not going to happen, Sergeant."

Her dark unblinking eyes, her mouth firmly set, her whole body leaning toward me, and her hand waiting for the weapon that quivers in mine. I risked everything to rescue her and damn if she isn't risking it to save me.

The Others have loosed more than one kind of Silencer on the world, more than one kind of infested. I feel him inside me, the one who would rip my soul in two. And they didn't need to come a gazillion light-years to bring him here. He's always been there, inside, the Silencer Within.

"What's happening to us, Ringer?"

She nods: She knows exactly where I'm coming from. Always has.

"We still have a choice," she answers. "They want us to believe we don't, but it's a lie, Zombie. Their biggest one."

Behind her, Constance whimpers, "I am human."

That's how it'll go down. Those will be the last words of the last one left. I am human.

"I don't even know what that means anymore," I say to Ringer, to myself, to nobody at all.

But I drop the gun into Ringer's open hand.

37.

SAM.

THE FRONT DOOR flew open and Cassie lunged in from the porch, holding her rifle.

"Sam! Quick, go wake up Evan. Someone's-"

He didn't wait for the rest. He raced down the hall to Evan's room. Zombie had come back; Sam was sure of it.

Evan wasn't asleep. He was sitting up in bed, staring at the ceiling.

"What is it, Sam?"

"Zombie's back."

Evan shook his head. How could that be? Then he slid from the bed, grabbed his rifle, and followed Sam down the hall and into the living room.

And Cassie was saying, "What do you mean, Dumbo's gone?"

There was Zombie and Ringer and a stranger in the room with Cassie. Dumbo wasn't there. Teacup wasn't there.

"He's dead," Ringer answered, and Sam asked, "Teacup, too?" And Ringer nodded. Teacup, too.

Behind him, Evan Walker asked, "Who is this?" He was talking about the stranger, a blond older lady with a nice face, about the age of Sam's mother when she died.

"She's with me," Ringer said. "She's okay."

The lady was looking at Sam. She was smiling. "My name is Constance. And you must be Sam. Private Nugget. It's very nice to meet you."

She held out her hand. His daddy taught him to always shake hands firmly. A good, strong grip, Sam my man, but don't squeeze too hard.

The smiling lady did, though-very hard. She yanked Sam into her chest, wrapping an arm around his neck, and then he felt the end of a gun pressing against his temple.

38.

"THIS IS GOING to go smooth and easy," the lady yelled over the jumbled-up shouts of Zombie and Cassie. "Smooth and easy."

Zombie was looking at Ringer, who was looking at Evan Walker, and Cassie was looking at Ringer, too, and then his sister said, "You bitch."

"Weapons, over there," the lady said. Her voice still had a smile in it. "Stack 'em by the fireplace. Now."

They disarmed, one by one. Cassie said, "Don't hurt him."

"Nobody's getting hurt, sweetheart," the lady said, smiley-voiced. "Where's the other one?"

"The other what?" Cassie asked.

"Human. There's one more. Where is it?"

"I don't know what you're-"

"Cassie," Evan Walker said. But he was looking over Sam's head at the lady's face. "Go get Megan."

He saw his sister mouth to Evan Walker, Do something.

Evan Walker shook his head no.

"She won't come out of her room," Cassie said.

"Maybe she'll change her mind if you tell her I'm going to blow your little brother's brains out."

Zombie's face was pale and caked in dried blood, so he looked like a real zombie. "That's not going to happen," Zombie said. "So what now?"

"Then she shoots Nugget and keeps shooting people until Megan comes out," Ringer said. "Zombie, trust me on this."

"Oh, sure," Cassie said. "Terrific idea. Let's all trust Ringer."

"She's not here to hurt anyone," Ringer said. "But she will if she has to. Tell them, Constance."

"Me," Evan Walker said. "You've come for me, haven't you?"

"The girl first," Constance said. "Then we talk."

Cassie said, "That's fine. Talking's one of my favorite things. But first maybe you could let my little brother go . . . take me instead?" Cassie's hands were up and she was putting on her fake smile. It wasn't a good fake smile. You could always tell when she was faking, because she didn't look friendly; she looked like she was going to throw up.

The lady's arm like an iron bar pressing against his windpipe, hard to breathe now, and something else pressing against the small of his back, his special secret, nobody knew, not Zombie or even Cassie, and not this lady, either.

Sam slipped his hand behind his back, into the space between him and Constance.

He was a soldier. He had forgotten his ABCs but he remembered the lessons of combat. Your squad before God, that's what they taught him. He could remember only the vaguest outline of his mother's face, but he knew their faces, Dumbo's and Teacup's, Poundcake's and Oompa's and Flintstone's. His squad. His brothers and sisters. He couldn't recall the name of his school or what the street he lived on looked like. Those things and the hundred other forever-gone things didn't matter anymore. Only one thing mattered now, the cry of the firing range and the obstacle course rising from the throats of his squad: No mercy ever!

"You now have fifteen seconds," the lady holding him said. "Don't make me count them down; it's so melodramatic."

Then the gun was in his hand and he did not hesitate. He knew what to do. He was a soldier.

The gun kicked in his hand when he fired; he almost dropped it. The bullet ripped through the lady's abdomen and exited her lower back, the slug burying itself in the dusty sofa cushions. The noise was very loud in the small space, and Cassie cried out: For an awful second, she must have thought it was the lady's gun that went off.

The shot failed to drop the Constance lady or break her hold on his neck. Her grip loosened, though, at the shock of impact, and Sam heard the tiniest of gasps, a startled huh, and before he could blink, Ringer was flying over the coffee table, arm drawn back, hand curled into a fist. Her knuckles grazed his cheek before landing against the side of Constance's head, and then a hand he didn't see flung off the arm around his neck and he stumbled free. His sister reached for him, but he spun away, holding the gun with both hands, and Ringer yanked Constance completely off her feet and swung her body high into the air like an axman cutting firewood, smashing her down onto the coffee table. The table exploded, wood and glass and pieces of jigsaw puzzle spewing in every direction.

Constance sat up; Ringer rammed the heel of her hand into Constance's nose. Pop! You could hear it break. Blood burst from her open mouth.